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Editor’s Column UNDERSTANDING DISGUST – March 2014 There is much to enjoy in this issue! Click on the post title to get a quick overview of what’s inside.

ISRE Matters

How did disgust evolve and why does it have so many different elicitors? Should we take seriously our disgust reactions to moral issues, or dismiss them as brutal enforcers of a reactionary morality? This issue of Emotion Researcher is devoted to these two central puzzles about disgust.

Check out Arvid Kappas’ latest column. ISRE’s An Audio Interview With Paul Ekman President has an important reminder for all members, and needs your help.

Young Researcher Spotlight

Listen to an audio interview with Paul Ekman, one of the world’s leading affective scientists. Paul reminisces about his beginnings, and presents his latest views on expressions, basic emotions, re- gulation, lies, and the future of affective science.

Come inside to discover who is this issue’s featured young researcher!

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IN MEMORIAM

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Editor’s Column

Andrea Scarantino, Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University

Jeopardy question: Which emotion has seen the greatest increase of academic in terest over the past 20 years? Tybur and Lieberman have crunched the numbers, and one emotion comes out clearly on top: disgust. Distant second is sadness, f ol lowed by f ear and shame. Does emotion theory need a shrink? Possibly. But it is hard to resist the f ascination of disgust. Perhaps more than any other emotion, dis gust has a way of combining the base and the elevated, revealing both our animal side and our aspiration to part ways with it. The base is f amiliar: we are disgusted by f eces, corpses, rotten f ood, maggots, gory wounds and the like.

At the same time, politicians, betrayal, hypocrisy, and incest disgust us. And all of a sudden we are f ar removed f rom the toilet and the trashcan, with all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster waiting to happen. The sheer range of disgust elicitors raises a basic puzzle: How did disgust evolve and why does it have so many dif f erent elicitors? A second puzzle concerns the expansion of disgust to the moral domain: Should we take seriously our disgust reactions to moral issues, or dismiss them as brutal enf orcers of a reactionary morality?

These are the two central puzzles this issue of Emotion Researcher f ocuses on. We begin with Paul Rozin’s provocative skeptical argument about disgust’s biological origins. Rozin argues that, although disgust currently protects us f rom pathogens, it does not necessarily f ollow that it evolved biologically as a pathogen-avoidance mechanism, contrary to what many are now taking f or granted. He suggests as an alternative worth consider ing that disgust evolved culturally, just like f ire and penicillin, which also help us avoid pathogens but clearly lack a biological origin.

The next two articles present two of the best worked out theories on how disgust expanded beyond its evol ved origin. On one side, Rozin and Haidt def end their inf luential view that disgust started out as a distaste mechanism and later acquired the f unctions of protecting us f rom reminders of our animal origin and f rom inter personal and moral pollutants that symbolically contaminate our “sacred” self .

Tybur and Lieberman, on the other hand, argue that disgust started out as a pathogen-avoidance mechanism (inclusive of , but not restricted to, f ood-borne pathogens) and later acquired the f unctions of protecting us f rom sexual contact with reproductively unsuitable individuals and expressing condemnation f or certain classes of moral violations.

These f irst three articles give us a nice overview of the main live options in the debate on the origins and ex pansion of disgust. We will then switch gears, and f ocus on disgust’s normative side. Giner-Sorolla and Harris present several reasons f or discounting disgust in the moral domain, mentioning f or instance its trigger-happy eliciting mechanism, its relative impenetrability to contextual f actors and its tendency to lead to “dehumanizing” and “cleansing” reactions.

Clark and Powell, on the other hand, invite us to take a second look at disgust, calling into question some of the empirical evidence f or its alleged inf lexibility, and pointing out various analogies between disgust and anger, a negative emotion whose role in morality is much less f rowned upon.

If disgust leaves you cold, rest assured that there is more to enjoy in this issue of Emotion Researcher. We have a real treat: an audio interview with Paul Ekman, the f ather of modern day basic emotion theory. I emailed Ekman f if teen questions, and I received an audio f ile with his responses, which I broke down into bite-sized chunks.

In his interview, Ekman walks us through his storied career, f rom his beginnings as a student of Tomkins to his most recent collaboration with the Dalai Lama. The interview has some surprising moments, and it will give you a sense of what drives the research agenda of what is arguably the most inf luential emotion theorist alive.

Our President, Arvid Kappas, reminds us in his ISRE Matters column of a very important date: ISRE’s 30th bi rthday! It will take place this April, since ISRE was f ounded in Paris on April 25th-26th of 1984. Arvid’s column contains a link to our f ounding document (check out the list of f ounders!) and a call f or help documenting the photographic history of ISRE’s conf erences.

Last but not least, Giovanna Colombetti, a philosopher f rom Exeter University, introduces us to her interdiscip linary work on emotions, which applies insights f rom both philosophical phenomenology and neuroscience to the understanding of the nature of emotions, appraisals and f eelings.

A sad f inal note is that on January 15 of this year psychologist Michael Owren passed away. He was at the time adjunct Prof essor of Psychology at Emory University. Michael served on the editorial board of Emotion Review since 2009 and his important publications over almost three decades have greatly advanced our understanding of the role of af f ect in non-linguistic communication. Drew Rendall, a long-time f riend and collaborator, has contributed a note to remember Michael’s lif e and scientif ic achievements. He will be sorely missed.

Enjoy this issue, and, as always, be in touch with comments, ideas, f eedback on the website, inf ormation about f uture conf erences, and anything else that strikes your f ancy.

Previous Editor’s Columns

Editor’s Column – Emotional Brain Issue emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/isre-matters-disgust-issue/

ISRE Matters – Disgust Issue

Arvid Kappas, Psychology, University of Bremen, ISRE’s President

Dear ISRE members, dear f riends of ISRE,

This year we will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the International Society f or Research on Emotion. The f ounding meeting of our society took place on the 25th and 26th of April 1984 in Paris, France, at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. This year we want to organize a f ew activities to mark this important milestone and one of the things that is dear to my heart is to better document our past.

If you click on the program of the f ounding meeting (below) and check out the list of participants, you will see that ISRE has been since the very be ginning the occasion/place/society where things came together. As reported in our f ounding document, “progress requires that inf ormation and tech niques be shared and that research become multidisciplinary and multination al”.

As we move to a stronger online presence and better access to inf ormation f or all, I f eel that we should present our past better, so that our f uture shall benef it f rom that. I see this not only as something related to telling a curi ous history of a small society, but as an important part of documenting what would help to shape af f ective science in the decades f ol lowing the f ounding of ISRE.

A place to start would be to document the conf erences of our society throughout the years, because our conf erences have historically been the primary venue f or the sharing of “inf orma tion and techniques” and f or discussion and debate. Particular ly, I am interested in visual materials. Do you have photos of ISRE meetings? If you do, please send them to us, ideally di gitally. Please indicate the occasion, e.g., place and time as well as who is being shown. I am sure these materials will also have signif icant potential use f or educational purposes and we will make them available to the public at large. Please send all photos to Jan Stets ([email protected]), who agreed to serve as a nexus to collect relevant materials.

Just to be clear – we are not a society that lives in the past – we are working on our f uture. I have the f irm belief that 30 years f rom now we will look at our meetings f rom now and see all the relevant action unf olding right there and then. It is one of the peculiar aspects of emotion research that it is a truly transdisciplinary enterprise. EMOTION does not belong to any single discipline, instead it requires multidisciplinary approac ISRE’s Fo und ing Do cume nt (Click to g e t the p d f) hes that can help bridge the dif f erent levels of analysis and help us get a better grasp of our object of investigation.

The terminology to describe our f ield changes across disciplines and individual researchers. I like to talk about emotion science. Others talk about af f ective sciences. Then we have the philosophy of emotions, the sociology of emotions, the history of ideas about emotions, and so on. But do not be f ooled: in the end any f ruitf ul investigation that goes to the heart of things will boil down to an interaction of a broad array of discip lines f rom philosophy to the neuro sciences, f rom psychology to sociology, f rom biology to history. Further more, current emotion research projects have practical applications in many f ields, f rom business to engineer ing, f rom robotics to law enf orcement. ISRE has been f or 30 years, and will continue to be, the place where ideas come to meet, a true melting pot of creative f orces!

Previous ISRE Matters Columns

ISRE Matters – Emotional Brain Issue

Roll the Credits (by Jerry Parrott) emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/on-the-origin-of-disgust/

On The Origin of Disgust

Paul Rozin, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

There has been a major increase in interest in the emotion of disgust over the last decade, especially in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, and this has substantially enriched our understanding. I f ocus here on the evolutionary psychology of disgust, which involves determining its adaptive value in our ancestral environment, and on the construction of the history of disgust over evolutionary time (Rozin & Schull, 1988). Generally speaking, the creation of a convincing origin story f or a trait, which is usually a consequence of the adaptive value, is exceedingly dif f icult. We just do not have good detailed records of human behaviors or mental events during the long course of human evolution. We almost always have to inf er an origin, rather than demonstrate it.

The critical inf erence, f or biological evolution, is that there is a genetic basis f or the f eature in question, such that natural selection could operate upon it. The f our primary types of evidence that may be available to assign a genetic origin to a human f eature are: (1) It is present at birth or very soon thereaf ter; (2) It is present in non- human primates; (3) We can establish genetic origins by mapping a path f rom genes to the f eature in question; (4) We can establish a possible role f or genes by showing some heritability f or the trait in question. This is commonly done with twin studies, which generally indicate modest to substantial heritability f or the traits usual ly measured by psychologists. But accounting f or variance (heritability) does not demonstrate that the basic core f eature is itself inherited. It simply shows that genes can work to moderate expression. Thus, reading ab ilities are to some degree heritable, but writing, the critical base f or reading, is acquired and not inherited.

Tybur and his colleagues (2012) and Curtis (2013) have made f orcef ul arguments that disgust evolved bi ologically, originally to protect humans f rom pathogens. The evidence is clear that disgust does serve such a f unction in contemporary humans, and presumably in whatever ancestors had disgust reactions (Oaten, Steven son & Case, 2009, Tybur et al, 2012, Curtis, 2013). The two most convincing pieces of adaptive evidence are (1) the avoidance by humans of entities which have a higher probability of microbial contamination (Curtis, 2013; Tybur et al., 2013) and (2) the apparently universal contamination response in humans over about 4 years of age (Rozin & Nemerof f , 2002). That is, all normal humans (above 4 years of age) tested avoid ob jects that have touched something disgusting. This is exactly what one would expect f or a system designed to avoid microbial contamination, although Tybur et al (2012) and Curtis (2013) do not cite contamination as a crit ical f eature in support of their pathogen-avoidance view of disgust. I do not understand why they do not cite contamination, which we consider a def ining f eature of disgust, although this may be because it does not ap pear until 4-5 years of age. The most systematic case f or disgust as a disease avoidance mechanism, whatev er its origin, comes f rom Oaten et al. (2009), who do recognize the importance of contamination f or their argu ment.

The adaptive value of what we call core disgust – the avoidance of f oods of animal origin, and spoiled meat – f its nicely with a pathogen account, since animal f oods are the source of almost all pathogens (as opposed to toxins). But evidence f or its origin in biological evolution, while quite plausible, has not yet been demonstrated. Disgust is not present at birth, it is not present in any non-humans if we include the f ocus on spoilage and con tamination, and research has not mapped a path f rom genes to disgust. Although individual dif f erences in dis gust are in part heritable, we do not know that the basic circuitry f or disgust is itself inherited.

Our model of the origins of disgust assumes that it is built upon the preadapted bitter (toxin) avoidance sys tem. That system is clearly biologically evolved. The question is when the preadaptive step f rom toxin avoidan ce to pathogen avoidance occurred. We (Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, 2008) never positively assigned this transf er of f unction to biological or cultural evolution, though it is clearly one or the other.

Disgust appeared somewhere in the long history of human evolution. We don’t know when and where. The abs ence of the best sources of evidence leaves the assignment of disgust origins to genetic selection in biolog ical evolution uncertain. Neither contamination sensitivity nor avoidance of decayed substances are present at or shortly af ter birth in humans, and neither is documented to be present in other primates. The f act that dis gust f unctions to protect humans f rom microbial contamination is a start f or an evolutionary account, but it is f ar f rom conclusive. Both f ire and antibiotics are parts of the human antimicrobial repertoire, but neither evol ved biologically. So just establishing an adaptive value f or a trait does not make a strong case f or its biological evolution.

There are other problems with the evolutionary view. Its strong points are the power of evolutionary theory it engages, and its link to survival value, but there are observations that are hard to explain on the evolutionary view. For example, why is it so hard to get people to wash hands to avoid microbial contamination? Why do in f ants consume f eces (a practice terminated by the universal cultural institution of toilet training)? And why isn’t there disgust to coughing or breathing, major sources of airborne inf ection? None of these questions negates the possibility of a biological evolution of disgust, but they surely question its certainty.

The case is very dif f erent f or the f acial expression of disgust, which is clearly borrowed (I would say by pre adaptation) f rom the bitter rejection f ace, a f eature biologically adaptive f or the avoidance of toxins. The “bitt er f ace” is present at birth and in non-human primates, and even in rats. We consider the poison avoidance sys tem to be the preadaptive origin of disgust, but we do not consider it to be disgust per se. It is neither elicited by spoilage, nor are bitter f oods contaminating. Kelly (2011), as well as myself and colleagues (Rozin and Fal lon, 1987), recognize that there is a major dif f erence between a biologically evolved poison rejection system and a microbe avoidance system. This big jump in any account of the biological or cultural evolution of disgust does not seem to bother evolutionary psychologists. I am inclined to think that the pathogen avoidance part of disgust is biologically evolved, but I cannot create a convincing case with the evidence at hand, in such marked contrast to the clear evolutionary basis f or the bitter/toxin avoidance system. Possible origin stories, compatib le with either biological or cultural evolution, include the increased risk of pathogens when humans began to eat more animal f oods, when humans domesticated animals (leading to much more intimate contact with anim als), or when humans began to live in very dense concentrations. But these are just possibilities.

To reiterate my central point, if something would be adaptive in our ancestral environment (f ire and antibiotics would certainly have been), and currently serves the same f unction, it does not f ollow that it evolved biological ly. It could have evolved culturally. For reasons that escape me (Rozin, 2010), evolutionary psychologists don’t like to consider cultural evolution, although (1) cultural evolution, f or the most part, works under the same prin ciples as biological evolution, and (2) we can actually accumulate def initive evidence f or cultural evolutionary origins, because they are more recent, and of ten leave records (f or example, f or some thousands of years, in writing). Indeed we know a lot about the cultural evolution of writing itself (Gleitman and Rozin, 1977)! So, I think we are treading on less than solid ground if we try to build a model of the earliest, pathogen-related f orms of disgust, as a clearly biologically evolved system. And later expansions of disgust to animal reminders, interpersonal contacts, and sexual and some other moral violations are much less persuasive cases of biolog ical evolution. One can well imagine, as Tybur et al do, and consistent with our prior f ormulations, that disgust expands f rom an initial pathogen f ocus, without assuming that the original pathogen f ocus was biologically evolved.

The comparison between evolutionary and developmental psychology may be illuminating. Evolutionary psyc hology is based on one great, well-documented theory about origins, but f aces dif f icult problems in directly de monstrating the evolutionary origins of most f eatures of behavior that psychologists care about. Development al psychology has a much weaker theoretical basis, but has a signif icantly easier empirical task in demonstrat ing origins. Thus we might suppose that disgust originates in the process of toilet training (Rozin & Fallon, 1987). And if we were really motivated to do so, and no one has been so motivated yet, we could probably de termine the extent to which this is true. In sum, I suggest that developmental, cultural and evolutionary perspec tives have enlightened our understanding of disgust, but the story of the origin of disgust is still uncertain.

References

Curtis, V. (2013). Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t eat. The science behind revulsion. Chicago: University of Chicago

Gleitman, L. R., & Rozin, P. (1977). Structure and acquisition of reading. I. Relations between orthographies and the structure of language. In A. S. Reber & D. Scarborough (Eds.), Toward a Psychology of Reading (pp. 1-53). Potomac, Maryland: Erlbaum

Kelly, D. (2011). Yuck! The nature and moral signif icance of disgust. Cambrdige, MA: MIT Press.

Oaten, M., Stevenson, R. J., & Case, T. I. (2009). Disgust as a Disease-Avoidance Mechanism. Psychological Bul letin, 105, 303-321

Rozin, P., & Fallon, A. E. (1987). A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review, 94, 23-41.

Rozin, P., & Schull, J. (1988). The adaptive-evolutionary point of view in experimental psychology. In R. C At kinson, R. J. Herrnstein, G. Lindzey, & R. D. Luce (Eds.), Handbook of Experimental Psychology (pp. 503-546). New York: Wiley-Interscience.

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2008). Disgust. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (eds.). Handbook of emotions, third edition (pp. 757-776). New York: Guilf ord. (First edition published in 1993).

Rozin, P., & Nemerof f , C. (2002). Sympathetic magical thinking: the contagion and similarity “heuristics”. In: Gilovich, T., Grif f in, D., & Kahneman, D. Heuristics and biases. The psychology of intuitive judgment. (Pp. 201- 216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rozin, P. (2010). Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology: Complementing each other in the study of culture and cultural evolution. In: Schaller, M., Norenzayan, A., Heine, S. J., Yamagishi, T., & Kameda, T. Evolution, culture, and the human mind. (pp. 9-22). New York: Psychology Press

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure. Psyc hological Review, 120(1), 65-84. emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/on-the-expansion-of-disgust/

On The Expansion Of Disgust

Paul Rozin, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania & Jonathan Haidt, Business and Society Pro gram, NYU-Stern

Tybur et al (2012) of f er an evolutionary theory of disgust’s origins, nature, and expans ion. Their theory has much in common with our older theory of disgust (Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, 1993; 2008). Both theories presume a f ood-related origin, although Tybur et al., by invoking a pathogen origin, are open to non-oral (e.g. air borne) original disgusts. Both invoke the process of preadaptation to explain the ex pansion of disgust (although Tybur et al. use the term “co-opted”). Preadaptation (re lated to the later idea of exaptation) (Mayr, 1960) ref ers to the f act that in biological (and cultural) evolution, something already present–usually something that evolved f or another purpose–can be recruited to a new f unction. Both theories recognize a role f or disgust in response to certain other humans and certain types of moral violations. That is a lot of similarity.

Our main dif f erences arise in two areas: 1) what are the domains into which disgust expanded? and 2) is biological evolution f or pathogen avoidance suf f icient f or explaining disgust and its expansion, or does cul tural evolution play a crucial role? Tybur et al (2012) subsume what we call “animal reminder” disgust into their central category of pathogen disgust. Animal reminder disgust as we use the term ref ers to the disgust respon se to corpses, blood, gore, amputations, piercings, and other violations of the normal, culturally-agreed-upon outer “envelope” of the human body. Tybur et al. note that many of these elicitors – such as blood and corpses – are vectors f or pathogens, and that is certainly true (and more important than we acknowledged in our early papers).

But many of these “creepy” items have little to do with pathogens, e.g., seeing a man with a glass eye remove the eye f rom its socket, or seeing someone who is morbidly obese. Items such as these repeatedly f actored together in our early work. That is, when we examined hundreds of candidate items f or our Disgust Scale , an imal reminder items were rather highly correlated with one another, and less highly correlated with what we cal led core disgust items, like rotting f ood (Haidt, McCauley & Rozin, 1994).

In trying to make sense of this cluster, we drew on anthropological work, and on the writings of Ernest Becker (1973). We suggested that many cultures have come to use disgust to reinf orce their own norms about the ideal human body (an ideal that varies across cultures). Part of the motivation f or guarding this ideal was the motivation to believe that human beings and human bodies are special; we are not like other animals, and th ings that remind us that we are in f act animals tend to recruit disgust. In particular, one animal property–death– is particularly threatening to the only species that consciously appreciates its own mortality. A signif icant motivating f orce in human history and cultural evolution, at least over the last 10,000 years, has been coping with death. And a major f unction of many religions is to relieve death anxiety. Tybur et al. (2012) have raised some good objections to our explanation of the animal reminder items (e.g., animals breathe, yet breathing is not disgusting). But they include only one item of the animal-reminder type on their Three Domains of Disgust (3DD) scale (Tybur et al., 2009). The single item is touching a person’s bloody cut – but because the item in cludes touching blood, it is clearly a pathogen threat. We think they may have ignored these disgust elicitors, and hence an important component of disgust, because it didn’t f it their theory. Our biggest area of disagreement with Tybur et al. is over the nature of moral disgust. We carved out a well- def ined subset of moral violations and showed that they were linked more closely to disgust than to anger (Rozin et al., 1999). These were violations of what Shweder et al. (1997) called the “ethics of divinity.” Many cul tures create sacred objects and values; many treat the body as a temple; many have notions of purity, pollu tion, desecration and degradation. These cultural values and practices are heavily moralized, and they involve elements of contagion, yet they cannot be interpreted as ef f orts to guard against actual pathogens. We did not include such items on our disgust scale because we f ound, early on, that they did not seem to correlate well with the other disgust subscales—just as the moral component of Tybur et al’s 3DD scale correlates rath er weakly with their sexual and pathogen components. We think that part of the problem with moral disgust is that, in English, the word disgust is used in the specif ic sense we and Tybur et al. propose, but also to general ly mean “bad”, either morally or otherwise (Nabi, 2002). It is a f act of interest that people will say that a wide range of moral violations are “disgusting” and show the disgust f ace. Perhaps in the most recent stage of its history, “disgust” began to be loosely used to signal general moral rejection.

The 3DD has a subscale f or moral disgust, but it consists exclusively of questions about violations of f air ness, f or which we know that the dominant emotion is anger, not disgust. For example, the 3DD asks subjects to rate how disgusting is the concept of “shoplif ting a candy bar,” or the concept of “a student cheating to get good grades.” People do indeed vary in their willingness to use disgust to describe these acts, but we don’t be lieve this variation tells us anything about disgust sensitivity, or about moral disgust. Olatunji et al. (2012) have reported evidence that the moral items on the Tybur et al. disgust scale are more associated with anger than disgust, and we have unpublished evidence showing the same.

Clearly there is much more work to be done on disgust, particularly on moral disgust. Tybur et al., in our view, have oversimplif ied the moral domain in their quest f or parsimony. Human beings are cultural creatures who have woven disgust into their religious, political, and moral practices. We think that the expansion of disgust be yond its probable original role as an “oral def ense” system is more complex. Preadaptation in biological and cul tural evolution may be the processes through which this has occurred, but how and when the expansions hap pened, the changes in f unction that occurred, and the interactions between biology and culture are yet to be de scribed. Unlike Tybur et al., we think that cultural psychology, as well as evolutionary psychology, is necessary to tell the whole story.

References

Becker, E. . (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press.

Haidt, J., McCauley, C. R., & Rozin, P. (1994). Individual dif f erences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Dif f erences, 16, 701-713.

Mayr, E. (1960). The emergence of evolutionary novelties. In S. Tax (ed.) Evolution af ter Darwin, Volume 1. The evolution of lif e. pp. 349-380. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Nabi, R. (2002). The theoretical versus the lay meaning of disgust: Implications f or emotion research. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 695-703.

Olatunji, B. O., Adams, T., Ciesielski1, B., Bieke, D., Shivali, S., & Broman-Fulks, J. (2012). The Three Domains of Disgust Scale: Factor Structure, Psychometric Properties, and Conceptual Limitations. Assessment, 19, 205- 225

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (1993). Disgust. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (eds.). Handbook of emotions, (pp. 575-594). New York: Guilf ord.

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2008). Disgust. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (eds.). Handbook of emotions, third edition (pp.757-776). New York: Guilf ord.

Rozin, P., & Fallon, A. E. (1987). A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review, 94, 23-41.

Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral em otions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personal ity & Social Psychology, 76, 574-586

Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the “big three” explanations of suf f ering. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119-169). New York: Routledge.

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual dif f erences in three f unctional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 103-122.

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2012). Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure. Psyc hological Review, emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/evaluating-distinct-evolutionary-theories-of-disgust/

Animal reminders, pathogens, and sex: Evaluating distinct evolutionary theories of disgust

Joshua Tybur, Dept of Social and Organizational Psychology, VU University Amsterdam & Debra Lieberman, Dept of Psychology, University of Miami

While disgust as a subject of inquiry has skyrocketed in popularity over the past 20 years (see Figure 1), there has yet to be a consensus among psychologists regard ing disgust’s f unction(s). We believe this is partially due to the variation in objects, concepts, and behaviors that elicit disgust—things as varied as lawyers, vomit, in cest, diapers, politicians, and sex during menstruation (e.g., Curtis & Biran, 2001; Haidt et al., 1997; Nabi, 2002).

Although some have suggested that disgust is best described as having the generic f unction of “protecting the self ” (e.g., Miller, 2004), others have proposed that the heterogeneity of disgust elicitors ref lects multiple disgust adaptations, each of which evolved in response to distinct selection pressures. For example, Rozin, Haidt, McCauley and colleagues (RHM; 2008, 2009) suggest disgust evolved f rom distaste —a f ood-rejection adaptation f or neutralizing toxins—in response to new selection pressures imposed by pathogens in the varied, omnivorous human diet.

Inspired by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973), RHM f urther argue that this pathogen-avoidance emotion was exapted f or a new f unction: to “protect the soul” (Rozin et al., 2008, p. 764) by neutralizing purported existential threats posed by re minders that humans are animals and, hence, mortal. Rozin et al. (2008) argue that this perspective is supported by their observation that “anything that reminds us that we are animals elicits disgust.” (p. 761).

Prototypical animal reminders, under this f ramework, include dead bodies, def ormity Prototypical animal reminders, under this f ramework, include dead bodies, def ormity (e.g., burn wounds, port wine birthmarks), bad hygiene (e.g., body odor), and sex. RHM also posit domains of “interpersonal” disgust, which they argue f unctions to maintain social distinctiveness, and moral disgust, which they argue f unctions to pro tect the social order. We do not f urther address moral disgust here (though see Tybur, Lieberman, Kurzban, and DeScioli, 2013, pages 73-77, f or our account of morality and “purity” and “divinity” viola tions, as well as disgust toward unf air and harmf ul acts). Brief ly, then, RHM posit f our f unctions f or disgust: 1) to neutralize pat hogens; 2) to neutralize the purported threats posed by reminders that humans Data we re co lle cte d using PsychInfo se arche s fo r e ach ye ar fro m 1993 to are animals; 3) to maintain social dis 2012. Se arche s sp e cifie d that the e mo tio n (e .g ., d isg ust) ap p e are d in the ab stract o f the p ap e r. Data are the p ro p o rtio n o f 1993 se arch hits fo r e ach ye ar tinctiveness, and 4) to protect the social thro ug h 2012. Base line (1993) hits fo r the e mo tio ns we re as fo llo ws: d isg ust order. (22), sad ne ss (78), fe ar (667), shame (111), co nte mp t (9), ang e r (362), g uilt (204), je alo usy (36). In contrast to the type of evolutionary trajectory proposed by RHM, we, along with other researchers in the area, (e.g., Curtis et al., 2011; Fessler & Navarrete, 2003) have suggested that disgust evolved to perf orm a dif f erent set of f unctions. Specif ically, we have argued that disgust f unctions in the realms of pathogen avoidance, sexual choice, and moral judgment (see Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009; Tybur et al., 2013). Here, we will ref er to this as the three domain disgust (3DD) model. The 3DD and RHM models are similar in that they both posit evolved f unctions f or dis gust, and both posit that disgust serves some pathogen-avoidance f unction. They dif f er in a number of ways as well. For example, the 3DD model does not argue that disgust evolved f rom distaste to neutralize f ood borne pathogens, but that it evolved f rom pathogen avoidance adaptations that are ubiquitous across species. Further, the 3DD model includes f unctions relevant to sexual choice, whereas the RHM model does not; similar ly, the RHM model includes f unctions relevant to symbolically protecting the soul, whereas the 3DD model does not. These dif f erences are f leshed out to make dif f erent predictions below. First, we provide f urther details re garding the 3DD model.

Conspecif ics and animals are potential sources of pathogens. All else equal, psychological mechanisms that de tected pathogens and motivated physical avoidance of them would have conf erred reproductive advantages. Note that these do not need to be f ood borne pathogens. Indeed, touching vomit, f eces, and other sources of pathogens with the hands can cause inf ection even if the pathogen sources are not directly ingested. For ex ample, pathogens on the hands can enter the body via cuts and scrapes, and they can be transmitted to ot herwise noninf ectious f oods, which can then be consumed. In contrast to the animal-reminder f unction pro posed by RHM, we suggest that disgust toward corpses, def ormity, and bad hygiene f unctions to reduce phys ical contact based on the pathogen-relevant inf ormation associated with these objects. We f urther suggest that disgust toward sex, rather than f unctioning to neutralize reminders that humans are animals, evolved to motivate avoidance of specif ically sexual (rather than generally physical) contact with individuals who impose net reproductive costs as sexual partners. Mating with close genetic relatives, f or instance, imposes signif icant reproductive costs, and evolution should have engineered psychological mechanisms to prevent and deter sexual, but not physical, contact. Sexual disgust, we argue, was exapted f rom pathogen disgust and modif ied (e.g., to motivate avoidance of sexual contact rather than purely physical contact) to perf orm this f unction.

These two evolutionary models propose dif f erent f unctional explanations f or disgust toward items that RHM state f all into an “animal-reminder” category. On the one hand, RHM suggest disgust toward dead bodies, bad hygiene, body products, and sex f unctions to neutralize the existential threats posed by reminders that we are animals and thus mortal. On the other hand, the 3DD model suggests two dif f erent adaptations underlie dis gust toward corpses and sex: one f or avoiding physical contact with pathogens and another f or avoiding sexu al contact with reproductively costly mates. We f eel that the best way to evaluate these models is to use them to generate competing, testable predictions and compare the extent to which each model is supported by ob servations. Here we consider predictions regarding contact with corpses and disgust toward sex.

Let’s f irst consider disgust toward corpses and the predictions each model makes regarding (a) the consequ ences of failing to avoid physical contact with corpses (i.e., what happens if disgust were somehow removed, but physical contact, direct or indirect, remains), and (b) whether non-human animals avoid corpses. With re spect to (a), the 3DD model predicts that f ailing to avoid physical contact with corpses increases inf ectious dis ease costs, whereas the animal-reminder perspective does not make this prediction (recall, the RHM model posits that the key threats posed by corpses are symbolic and existential, not inf ectious). With respect to (b), the animal-reminder perspective predicts that only humans – so not non-human animals – should avoid cor pses, since (purportedly) only humans can f orecast their own mortality. In contrast, the 3DD model predicts that many species should avoid corpses, since the threats posed by decaying conspecif ics (e.g., inf ectious dis ease) are not unique to humans.

In both cases, the pathogen-avoidance perspective as outlined by the 3DD model f its observations better. As Ignaz Semmelweis discovered, removing the cues associated with putref ying bodies—and, hence, removing the disgust that motivates physical avoidance—can lead to inadvertent pathogen transmission and lethal inf ec tions. And, as multiple animal-behavior researchers have shown, non-human animals avoid dead conspecif ics, partially to avoid inf ection f rom pathogens that might have killed the animal or that are rapidly colonizing the corpse (indeed, “reminding” non-human animal pests of dead conspecif ics via olf actory cues is used to man age pests; see Wagner et al., 2011).

Using sex as another example, we can also consider the competing predictions each model makes regarding (a) how imagining sex with dif f erent partners changes disgust toward sexual acts, and (b) dif f erences between men and women in disgust toward sex. Regarding (a), the animal-reminder perspective suggests that the act of sexual intercourse should elicit disgust, because non-human animals also have intercourse–there is no distinc tion based on sexual partner implied by this model. In contrast, the 3DD model suggests that a sexual act should elicit disgust if the partner is perceived to be reproductively costly, but not if the partner is perceived to be reproductively benef icial. In our view, the animal-reminder perspective, again, does not f are well. For exam ple, a 25 year-old man would likely f ind sexual intercourse with his 22 year-old sister disgusting, even if the sist er possesses physical and mental traits he otherwise f inds attractive (see, e.g., De Smet, Speybroeck, & Verplaetse, in press; Lieberman, Tooby, and Cosmides, 2007). But the same “animalistic” act of intercourse with an unrelated, but equally attractive 22 year-old woman elicits lust rather than disgust.

With respect to (b), the RHM model would With respect to (b), the RHM model would predict that men and women should be roughly equally disgusted by sex. In contra st, based on Parental Investment Theory, (Trivers, 1972), which states that the sex that invests more in reproduction (e.g., via time and metabolic resources) should be sexually choosier, the 3DD model predicts that women should be more avoidant of – and hence more disgusted by – sex than men (Tybur et al., 2013). Data support the 3DD model, with multiple studies f inding that women are much more sensitive to sexual disgust than men. That is, when asked to self -report how disgusted they are by a variety of disgust elicitors, women report f ar greater disgust toward sexual items than men do. Indeed, the magnitude of these sex dif f erence dwarf s the magnitude of sex dif f erence in disgust toward other elicitors grouped within the “animal-reminder” domain by RHM and disgust toward moral violations Fig ure 2 (see Figure 2). Data d e scrib e stand ard ize d me an se x d iffe re nce s (the d iffe re nce b e twe e n wo me n’s scale sco re s and me n’s scale sco re s in stand ard d e viatio n units, o r Co he n’s d ) in Thre e Do main Disg ust Scale (TDDS) facto r me ans acro ss This – along with other data (see Tybur et fo ur d ata se ts. The TDDS is a 21-ite m me asure in which p articip ants se lf- al., 2009, Study 4) suggests that disgust re p o rt, o n a 0 = no t at all d isg usting to 6 = e xtre me ly d isg usting scale , ho w d isg usting the y find state me nts. So me state me nts co nce rn p atho g e n cue s toward sex and disgust toward corpses (e .g ., “Ste p p ing o n d o g p o o p ”), so me co nce rn se xual situatio ns (e .g ., “Find should not be categorized into the same ing o ut that so me o ne yo u d o n’t like has se xual fantasie s ab o ut yo u”), and so me co nce rn mo ral vio latio ns (e .g ., “A stud e nt che ating to g e t g o o d “domain,” and that the threats that sexual g rad e s”). Facto r me ans are ave rag e s acro ss the se ve n ite ms p e r facto r. disgust f unctions to neutralize vary across Wo me n’s me an sco re s are hig he r acro ss e ve ry d ata se t and e ve ry TDDS facto r. men and women.

We believe that the recent surge in disgust research can have maximum impact if guided and interpreted using a robust theoretical f ramework. Given the current theoretical and empirical arguments against the existence of an “animal–reminder” f unction of disgust as outlined by RHM (see Al-Shawaf and Lewis, 2013; Royzman and Sabini, 2001, Tybur et al., 2009, 2013), we believe that it is time to retire this candidate f unctional explanation.

Moving f orward, we suggest that researchers continue to explore topics such as the proximate (i.e., inf orma tion processing) mechanisms underlying plausible evolved f unctions, discussing the degree to which disgust f unctions to promote group versus individual f itness (see Pinker, 2012, f or a discussion), and discussing the role of cultural evolution in the structure and f unction of disgust (see Tybur, 2013; contrast with Rozin and Haidt, 2013 ). For example, this type of approach might be usef ul in unraveling some of the mysteries of moral disgust, which we have suggested ref lects two phenomena: 1) the tendency f or people to morally condemn oth ers who engage in disgusting behaviors; and 2) the tendency f or people to communicate moral condemnation with verbal and f acial expressions of disgust. Ultimately, we believe that a systematic evolutionary approach can help integrate the impressive and growing body of research on disgust.

References

Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press.

Curtis, V., Aunger, R., & Rabie, T. (2004). Evidence that disgust evolved to protect f rom risk of disease. Proceed ings of the Royal Society: Series B: Biological Sciences, 271(Suppl. 4), S131–S133. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2003.0144

Curtis, V., & Biran, A. (2001). Dirt, disgust, and disease: Is hygiene in our genes? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 44, 17–31. doi:10.1353/ pbm.2001.0001

Curtis, V., de Barra, M., & Aunger, R. (2011). Disgust as an adaptive system f or disease avoidance behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Series B: Biological Sciences, 366, 389 – 401. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0117

De Smet, D., Speybroeck, L. V., & Verplaetse, J. (2013). The Westermarck ef f ect revisited: A psychophysiological study of sibling incest aversion in young f emale adults. Evolution and Human Behavior. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.09.004

Fessler, D. M. T., & Navarrete, C. D. (2003a). Domain-specif ic variation in disgust sensitivity across the menstru al cycle. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 406 – 417. doi:10.1016/S1090-5138(03)00054-0

Haidt, J., Rozin, P., McCauley, C., & Imada, S. (1997). Body, psyche, and culture: The relationship of disgust to morality. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9, 107–131. doi:10.1177/097133369700900105

Lieberman, D., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2007, February 15). The architecture of human kin detection. Nature, 445, 727–731. doi:10.1038/nature05510

Miller, S. B. (2004). Disgust: The gatekeeper emotion. Mahwah, NJ: Analytic Press

Nabi, R. (2002). The theoretical versus the lay meaning of disgust: Implications f or emotion research. Cognition & Emotion, 16, 695–703. doi:10.1080/02699930143000437

Olatunji, B. O., Adams, T., Ciesielski, B., Bieke, D., Sarawgi, S., & Broman-Fulks, J. (2012). The three domains of disgust scale: Factor structure, psychometric properties, and conceptual limitations. Assessment, 19, 202–225. doi: 10.1177/1073191111432881

Pinker, S. (2012). The false allure of group selection. Retrieved f rom http://www.edge.org

Royzman, E. B., & Sabini, J. (2001). Something it takes to be an emotion: The interesting case of disgust. Journ al for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 31, 29 –59. doi:10.1111/1468-5914.00145

Rozin, P., & Haidt, J. (2013). The domains of disgust and their origins: contrasting biological and cultural evolutionary accounts. Trends in cognitive sciences. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.001

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2008). Disgust. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 757–776). New York, NY: Guilf ord Press.

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (2009). Disgust: The body and soul emotion in the 21st century. In D. McKay & O. Olatunji (Eds.), Disgust and its disorders (pp. 9 –29). Washington, DC: American Psychological As sociation.

Trivers, R. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual selection and the des cent of man, 1871–1971 (pp. 136 –179). Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton

Tybur, J. M. (2013). Cultural and biological evolutionary perspectives on disgust – oil and water or peas and car rots? Retrieved f rom http://www.epjournal.net/blog

Tybur, J. M., Bryan, A. D., Lieberman, D., Caldwell Hooper, A. E., & Merriman, L. A. (2011). Sex dif f erences and sex similarities in disgust sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 343–348. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.04.003 Tybur, J. M., & De Vries, R. E. (2013). Disgust sensitivity and the HEXACO model of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 55, 660-665. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2013.05.008

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved f unction and structure. Psyc hological Review, 120, 65–84. doi: 10.1037/a0030778

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual dif f erences in three f unctional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 103–122. doi:10.1037/a0015474

Wagner, C. M., Stroud, E. M., & Meckley, T. D. (2011). A deathly odor suggests a new sustainable tool f or controll ing a costly invasive species. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 68, 1157–1160. doi:10.1139/f 2011-072

emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/why-disgust-is-morally-beneficial/

Defending Disgust: Why Disgust Is Morally Beneficial

Jason A. Clark, Institute of Cog Science, University of Osnabrueck & Philip A. Powell, Institute f or Economic An alysis of Decision-Making, University of Shef f ield

Many argue that moral disgust developed as a regulator of social behavior, and that it still dutif ully serves that purpose (Tybur et al. 2013). However, a growing number have criticised disgust as a morally objectionable emotion in modern society, emphasizing f ea tures that, while adaptive in response to pathogens, render disgust unsuitable f or polic ing morality (Nussbaum 2009; Kelly 2011; Bloom 2013). These include: cognitive and be havioral inf lexibility, the generation of “dumbf ounded” moral judgments lacking reasons, insensitivity to contextual f actors and reappraisal, dehumanization, and a f ocus on the whole person, rather than their actions (Schnall et al. 2008; Russell & Giner-Sorolla 2011).

Critics of disgust compare it unf avorably with other moral emotions (especially anger), which they hold to be more f lexible and reasoned, and lump it together with related emo tions such as shame, which are of ten viewed negatively f or similar reasons. Specif ically moral critiques of disgust have been largely qualitative, based on historical case studies and anecdotal examples. Arguments condemning disgust as a moral emotion emphasise disgust’s negative role in instances of stigmatization, such as homophobia, racism, and genocide. Disgust is involved in such scenarios, but we doubt that it is always and unique ly involved. Building on a series of papers arguing that disgust can be a morally benef icial emotion (Clark f orthcoming; Clark & Fessler, f orthcoming) we maintain that disgust can play a positive role in morality, and that the evidence f or condemning moral disgust is of ten either lacking, or misinterpreted. More specif ically:

(1) Causal relations between disgust and moral judgement are not well established. Evidence suggests that disgust can amplif y the severity of moral judgements, but there is insuf f icient evidence to conclude that it has the power to causally engender an unreasoned, “dumbf ounded” moral verdict, or that it is a “moralising em otion” per se (Pizzarro et al. 2011), i.e., that acts or agents that elicit disgust are automatically seen as immoral in some sense. Some research suggests an alternative temporal and causal ordering. Testing participants’ reac tions to moral violations that involved inherently disgusting elements, Yang and colleagues (2013) used a Go/No-Go paradigm and measured lateralized readiness potentials to determine the temporal order of physical disgust and moral inf ormation processing, in which participants were asked to respond with ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ con cerning the physical disgust and moral wrongness of a social act. They f ound that the moral wrongness of an action was processed bef ore any physical disgust, and suggest that (a) moral disgust does not require the pre sence of physical disgust elicitors, and (b) moral reactions may be equally (or more) important to humans than physical disgust.

Fessler et al. (2003) surveyed participants concerning meat consumption, reasons f or meat avoidance, and dis gust sensitivity, and f ound that (a) meat consumption was positively correlated with disgust sensitivity, and (b) individuals who avoided meat on moral grounds were not more sensitive to disgust than those who avoided meat f or other reasons, such as health. This suggest that moral vegetarians’ disgust reactions to meat are more a consequence, than an antecedent, of moral belief s. Hence, moral disgust may f unction as an af f ective modulator of moral judgements (preparing the agent to act in appropriate ways) but not the causal impetus,. Furthermore, other emotions (including anger) are guilty of modulating moral judgements, so condemning dis gust on this basis alone is tantamount to censuring all (moral) emotions. (2) Disgust is more flexible in its sensitivity to context and reappraisal than commonly ackowledged. Even simple f orms of disgust are highly sensitive to the context in which stimuli are presented. Context alone can determine whether an animal will consume f ood, and the extinction of disgust responses are dependent on learned context (Viar-Paxton & Olatunji 2012); e.g., an animal may develop an aversion to a particular f ood in one context where it is paired with nausea, but be willing to consume the same f ood in another context (Reilly & Schachtman 2008). For instance, people’s reactions to the (similar) odors of dirty socks and parmesan cheese may vary when given contextual inf ormation about the source. Also, disgust is sensitive to our motivational states (e.g., hunger or sexual arousal), and moral disgust continually interacts with opposing moral emotions like compassion and empathy. Further, moral disgust appears sensitive to cognitive reappraisal. This is dramatically illustrated by the cognitive ref raming displayed by survivors of the Andes 1972 f light disast er, many of whom elevated the acts of cannibalisms in which they engaged to the ritual of Holy Communion and interpreted it as a spiritual experience, thereby reducing their physical and moral disgust (Reed 1974). Imag ing experiments have shown moral disgust to be mitigated by perceptions of blame, controllability, or deliberate ef f orts to empathize with stigmatized individuals (Harris & Fiske 2007; Krendl et al. 2013). Moreover, Feinberg et al. (2013) suggest that dif f erences in the role of disgust in conservative vs. liberal morality may lie in liberals’ ability to regulate and reappraise disgust, rather than simply experiencing less moral disgust than conser vatives.

(3) The focus on extremely negative effects of disgust obscures its role in more ordinary and/or morally commendable values. Critics of disgust f ocus almost exclusively on disgust’s role in moral behaviors that most readers will condemn (e.g., homophobia). However, moral disgust has also been shown to occur in respon ses to violations such as others’ hypocrisy, lying, cheating, racism, sycophancy, exploitation of the weak, unf air ness, betrayal, and thef t. Critics would argue that disgust is not suited as a response to any moral violations, but the case is harder to make when conf ronted with the potential positive contribution of disgust to values with which we identif y.

(4) To the extent that disgust is more inflexible than other emotions, this can be beneficial in moral judg ment. Emerging evidence suggests that disgust is directed primarily towards more stable f eatures of individu als’ character or identity, rather than towards specif ic acts (Giner-Sorolla & Chambers in prep; Clark f orthcom ing). This is of ten presented as a vice, but in some cases we are better of f relying on inf ormation about the in dividual’s social category. The ability to negatively assess individuals’ character and respond appropriately is an important capacity (Ciaramelli et al. 2013), whose loss can lead people into negative relationships, as is il lustrated by those with damage to the medial pref rontal cortex, which is thought to mediate such responses.

(5) Empirical evidence that disgust dehumanizes is limited, and more lauded emotions like anger are also likely to produce dehumanization. Despite much qualitative research linking disgust to dehumanization, this causal link has only recently been tested. Using arbitrarily created outgroups (over- and under-estimators in a guessing task) Buckels and Trapnell (2013) demonstrated that induced disgust increased implicit associations of the outgroup with animals. Interestingly, however, they f ound that, while disgusted particpants showed the greatest shif t in this respect, all participants showed this implicit dehumanizing bias, whether or not they under went a disgust induction This suggests that dehumanization may be a more general and f undamental part of our group psychology, rather being disgust-specif ic. There is also little evidence concerning whether other emo tions also engender dehumanization. Anger has been shown to cause implicit negativity toward outgroups (De Steno et al. 2004), and Russell and Giner-Sorolla have preliminary evidence that anger can also produce de humaization (Giner-Sorolla & Russell, in prep.).

In sum, we encourage readers not to dismiss disgust as a problematic moral emotion, but to take a closer look at the empirical evidence on which such a critique is based. We have argued above that there are signif icant gaps in such evidence, and maintain that disgust can have a positive/adaptive role in morality under certain cir cumstances. References

Bloom, P. (2013). Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. Random House LLC.

Buckels, E. E., & Trapnell, P. D. (2013). Disgust f acilitates outgroup dehumanization. Group Processes & In tergroup Relations.

Ciaramelli, E., Sperotto, R. G., Mattioli, F., & di Pellegrino, G. (2013). Damage to the ventromedial pref rontal cor tex reduces interpersonal disgust. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(2), 171-180.

Clark, J. (f orthcoming). Digging disgust out of the dumpster: A neuropsychological def ense of self - and other- directed disgust as a moral virtue, in Powell, P, Simpson, J. and Overton, P. (eds.) The Revolting Self: Perspec tives on the Psychological and Clinical Implications of Self-Directed Disgust,Karnac Books.

Clark, J. & Fessler, D. (f orthcoming). The role of disgust in norms, and the role of norms in disgust research: Why liberals shouldn’t be morally disgust by moral disgust. TOPOI.

DeSteno, D., Dasgupta, N., Bartlett, M. Y., & Cajdric, A. (2004). Prejudice From Thin Air The Ef f ect of Emotion on Automatic Intergroup Attitudes. Psychological Science, 15(5), 319-324.

Fessler, D. M. T., Arguello, A. P., Mekdara, J. M., and Macias, R. (2003). Disgust sensitivity and meat consumption: a test of an emotivist account of moral vegetarianism. Appetite, 41, 31-41.

Giner-Sorolla, R., and Russell, P.S. (in prep.). Not just disgust: Fear and anger attitudes also predict intergroup dehumanization.

Giner-Sorolla, R., & Chambers, C. (in prep). Beyond Purity: Moral Disgust at the Desire to Harm.

Harris, L. T., & Fiske, S. T. (2007). Social groups that elicit disgust are dif f erentially processed in mPFC. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2(1), 45-51.

Kelly, D. R. (2011). Yuck!: the nature and moral signif icance of disgust. The MIT Press.

Krendl, A. C., Moran, J. M., & Ambady, N. (2013). Does context matter in evaluations of stigmatized individuals? An f MRI study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(5), 602-608.

Nussbaum, M. C. (2009). Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton University Press.

Pizarro, D., Inbar, Y., & Helion, C. (2011). On disgust and moral judgment. Emotion Review, 3, 267-268.

Reed, P. P. (1974). Alive: The story of the Andes survivors. HarperCollins: New York.

Reilly, S. & Schachtman, T.R. (2008) Conditioned taste aversion: neural and behavioral processes. Oxf ord Univers ity Press, USA.

Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011a). Moral anger is more f lexible than moral disgust. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(4), 360-364.

Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011b). Moral anger, but not moral disgust, responds to intentionality. Emo tion, 11(2), 233.

Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1096-1109.

Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved f unction and structure. Psyc hological Review, 120, 65-84.

Viar-Paxton, M. A., & Olatunji, B. O. (2012). Context ef f ects on habituation to disgust-relevant stimuli. Behavior Modification, 5, 705-722.

Yang, Q., Yan, L., Luo, J., Li, A., Zhang, Y., Tian, X., & Zhang, D. (2013). Temporal dynamics of disgust and moral ity: An event-related potential study. PLoS ONE, 8, e65094. emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/get-to-know-giovanna-colombetti/

Get To Know Giovanna Colombetti!

Giovanna Colombetti, Department of Sociology, Philosophy, and An thropology, University of Exeter

What is most distinctive about my work on emotions is that it is grounded in an account of the mind that emphasizes its embodied and af f ective character. My current project, f unded by the European Research Council, is titled “Emoting the Embodied Mind” and it aims to reconceptualize a variety of af f ective phenomena f rom the “embodied” perspective in the philosophy of mind. The project is primari ly philosophical, in the sense that it develops an abstract theoretical f ramework and explores its implications; in doing so, however, I draw on the empirical results unveiled by the af f ective sciences.

My starting point is the so-called “enactive” approach to the mind, which is a syn thesis of several interrelated and mutually supportive ideas f rom dif f erent disciplines, in particular phenomenological philosophy, psychology, biology, and neuroscience (the key texts developing this approach are Varela, Thompson, & Rosch 1991 and Thompson 2007; f or succinct introductions to enactivism see Tor rance 2005; Colombetti & Thompson 2008; Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher 2010; Thompson 2011).

Enactivism rejects the assumptions, widespread in cognitive science, that the body does not itself underpin cognitive capacities and that cognition is instantiated “centrally” by the brain only. Rather, according to enactiv ism cognition is realized (“enacted”) by the whole living organism embedded in the world. A central theme of en activism is the autonomous (i.e., self -determining) nature of living systems, and the idea that cognition, as en acted by living systems, ought to be understood in terms of self-organization. In a self -organizing system (e.g., a f lock of birds), there is no component that instructs or controls how the other components of the system be have; instead, the structure and the behaviour of the system result f rom the reciprocal inf luences of its vari ous constituents.

Another central theme of enactivism is the importance of examining in detail the nature of lived experience to develop an appropriate account of the mind. Much cognitive science is explicitly about the structure of the “cog nitive unconscious”, i.e., it aims to explain how a certain system of non-conscious representations implements some cognitive f unction. Enactivism takes its lead f rom the idea, developed especially in the phenomenological philosophical tradition, that our body is not just a physical entity but also an experienced or lived structure (Husserl [1952] 1989; Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1962). Understanding the mind thus requires an exploration of our embodied nature at both physical and experiential levels. Moreover, the two levels need to inf orm one another; rigorous descriptions of experience are necessary to make sense of brain and bodily activity, and data about the latter can be used to ref ine experiential reports (f or the idea of “circulation” between neuroscience and ex perience, see Varela 1996; f or an application of this idea to the study of emotion, see Colombetti 2013).

These two themes have interesting implications f or our understanding of af f ectivity (see Colombetti 2014):

Emotional episodes are self-organizing patterns of the organism

From the enactive perspective, emotional episodes such as f ear, anger, happiness, shame etc., are best con ceptualized as self -organizing patterns of the entire organism that recruit various processes (neural, muscular, autonomic, etc.) into highly integrated conf igurations (Colombetti 2009a, 2014). Related suggestions can be f ound in psychological and neuroscientif ic works, together with supporting empirical evidence (e.g., Fogel & Thelen 1987; Fogel et al. 1992; Freeman 2000; Lewis 2005). Importantly, this proposal provides a middle way between some of the most inf luential theories of emotion in psychology. Self -organizing emotional episodes can be highly variable, because the processes constituting them can organize themselves in dif f erent ways, de pending on the context. Yet at the same time, the range of their possible variations depends on the state of the organism, and is evolutionarily and developmentally constrained.

This perspective entails that there is no need to posit “internal causes” of emotion—such as af f ect programs (Tomkins 1962; Ekman 1980) or sequences of cognitive appraisals (as in the “component process model”; Scherer 2009). Additionally, there is no need to posit the existence of “basic” emotions, in the sense of emo tions that are building blocks of more complex or non-basic ones. Rather, all emotional episodes can be seen as complex, f lexible and variable self -organizing patterns—with some patterns occurring across dif f erent cul tures, and other patterns emerging only in specif ic contexts or even in specif ic individuals.

This perspective also dif f ers f rom the “conceptual act theory” proposed by Barrett and others (Barrett 2006; Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2011), according to which conceptualization, usually driven by language, is needed f or the construction of emotional episodes in oneself and others. From the perspective of self -organization, lan guage and language-based concepts are not required f or the organism to adopt, or better enact, specif ic em otional patterns (indeed even very simple organisms can be said to have emotions); at the same time, however, enculturation, including language, can inf luence how the organism self -organizes, including the way in which its various processes (muscular, physiological, etc.) integrate into specif ic emotional episodes (Colombetti 2009b, 2009c, 2014).

Appraisal is embodied

The enactivist idea that the mind needs to be understood by developing and integrating detailed accounts at the physical and experiential level has important implications f or the notion of appraisal. This notion standardly ref ers to a cognitive-evaluative process that elicits emotion—either as an external cause of emotion, or as a causal mechanism internal to emotion itself . In either case, the process of appraisal is typically conceptualized as an entirely “brainy” process, clearly distinct f rom emotion, or at least f rom its bodily aspects (its visceral, musculoskeletal, expressive and behavioural components).

The enactive perspective entails that appraisal is not entirely in the head, but is constituted by the activity of the whole situated organism (f or more details see Colombetti 2007, 2010, 2014). This view f ollows f rom the en active conception of cognition as thoroughly embodied, but is also in line with experiential considerations as well as some recent neuroscientif ic accounts. Experientially, it does not seem possible to clearly distinguish appraisal f rom emotion, and it seems misleading to suggest that a separate appraisal can produce or elicit an emotion in a linear way—f or example, to suggest that one first evaluates something as being a loss, and then f eels sadness. When one appraises something as being a loss and experiences sadness accordingly, the appraisal is already, I maintain, imbued with sadness. Moreover, I think that it is also inaccurate to separate the experience of appraisal f rom the bodily f eelings that of ten occur in emotion experience in the f orm of either vis ceral sensations or action tendencies. When these bodily f eelings occur, they are not experienced as mere re sponses to the appraisal, lacking evaluative character; rather, they are part of the experience of assessing a certain event as unf air, scary, enjoyable, etc.

These experiential considerations converge with neuroscientif ic accounts emphasizing that the brain areas traditionally associated with cognitive and emotional f unctions are so deeply integrated via processes of con tinuous reciprocal inf luences (also called “circular causation”) that it is inappropriate to posit linear causal sequ ences f rom cognition to emotion (and vice versa; see, e.g., Freeman 2000; Lewis 2005). In f act, some even claim that it is impossible to identif y brain areas uniquely dedicated to emotion (including bodily arousal) and cognition (including appraisal) respectively. In their extensive reviews, both Lewis (2005) and Pessoa (2008) f or instance show that brain regions traditionally viewed as emotional, such as the amygdala, are also involved in cognition; and vice versa, brain regions traditionally viewed as cognitive, such as the pref rontal cortex, are also involved in emotion (see also Pessoa 2012). They conclude that emotion and cognition (and appraisal more specif ically) are broad psychological categories that do not map neatly onto the brain. If we then add to this neural complexity the f urther consideration that the brain is itself deeply integrated with the rest of the organ ism (e.g., Thompson & Cosmelli 2012), it becomes even harder to hold on to the view that appraisal is a distinct cognitive and entirely “heady” process that does not overlap with other aspects of emotion.

Affectivity pervades the mind

Via its phenomenological connections, the enactive approach also helps to reclaim a “broader” and “deeper” no tion of af f ectivity than the one usually assumed in the af f ective sciences. Af f ective scientists typically f ocus on relatively narrow and bounded phenomena such as emotional episodes and moods. The phenomenological notion of af f ectivity ref ers instead to our basic capacity to be “af f ected”, in the sense of inf luenced by someth ing that matters to us (f or an accessible introduction to this and other phenomenological ideas about con sciousness, see Thompson & Zahavi 2007). In this sense, one need not be in an emotion or mood to be in an af f ective state; af f ectivity is a very broad phenomenon that ref ers to our basic, indeed inescapable, condition of caring about our existence and activities. This broad notion is also “deeper” than ordinary emotions and moods, in the sense that it is a condition of possibility f or those (it enables them): if we were non-af f ective, i.e., indif f erent beings, we would not be moved by anything, and accordingly we would not have emotions and moods. Importantly this notion of af f ectivity is intimately related to the one of embodiment. In a nutshell, it is because we are living bodily organisms that we can be af f ected and that things matter to us. Non-living beings do not strive to maintain themselves, and there is no reason why they should care about anything.

These three themes are elaborated in more detail in my book, The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the En active Mind (2014, just published by MIT Press). The book elaborates other enactivist themes and their relevan ce f or af f ective science as well. For example, it proposes new phenomenological categories to describe in de tail the many ways in which we experience our body in emotion experience. Drawing on the “neurop henomenological” approach (Varela 1996; Thompson 2007), the book also advances what I call a “neuro- physio-phenomenology” f or the scientif ic study of emotion experience. This term ref ers to a method f or integ rating f irst-person data about emotional f eelings (generated via rigorous f irst- and second-person methods, such as trained self -observation and intersubjective validation) and third-person data about brain and bodily ac tivity (generated via measures of brain as well as autonomic and musculoskeletal activity). The idea is that f irst-person data should be used to make sense of brain and bodily activity, whereas third-person data should in turn be used to ref ine reports about f eelings (see also Colombetti 2013). The book also addresses the place of af f ectivity in intersubjectivity. I distinguish dif f erent ways in which we f eel others in concrete, f ace-to- f ace (or better body-to-body) encounters—e.g., phenomena of basic empathy, f eelings of closeness and in timacy, sympathy—and relate these distinctions to existing empirical evidence of how our brain and bodies re spond to the bodily presence of others, supporting the interpretation that our widespread tendency to mimic others has primarily an af f ective role.

In sum, I think that the enactive approach to the mind of f ers a host of resources f or thinking about af f ectivity in novel and f ruitf ul ways. Af f ectivity is a complex biological as well as experiential phenomenon, and as such it needs to be addressed f rom a complex multidisciplinary and integrative perspective. Enactivism, with its syn thesis of ideas f rom biology, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of mind, and phenomenology, provides just such a perspective. Importantly, rather than inviting us to explain one aspect of af f ectivity (e.g., f eelings) in terms of another (e.g., neural activity), it calls f or detailed descriptions and analyses of each aspect, with the aim of showing that they can enrich and illuminate one another. This kind of pluralistic and integrative approach is, I think, precisely what we need to do justice to the richness of our embodied and af f ective lives.

References

Barrett, L. F. 2006. Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (1): 20-46. Colombetti, G. 2007. Enactive appraisal. Phenomenology & The Cognitive Sciences 6: 527-46.

Colombetti, G., and E. Thompson. 2008. The f eeling body: Towards an enactive approach to emotion. In De velopmental Perspectives on Embodiment and Consciousness, ed. W. F. Overton, U. Müller, and J. L. Newman, 45–68. New York: Erlbaum.

Colombetti, G. 2009a. From af f ect programs to dynamical discrete emotions. Philosophical Psychology 22 (4): 407-425.

Colombetti, G. 2009b. Reply to Barrett, Gendron and Huang. Philosophical Psychology 22 (4): 439-442.

Colombetti, G. 2009c. What language does to f eelings. Journal of Consciousness Studies 16 (9): 4-26.

Colombetti, G. 2010. Enaction, sense-making, and emotion. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne & E. Di Paolo (eds.), Enac tion: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (145-164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Colombetti, G. 2013. Some ideas f or the integration of neurophenomenology and af f ective neuroscience. Con structivist Foundations 8 (3): 288-297.

Colombetti, G. 2014. The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Di Paolo, E., M. Rohde, and H. De Jaegher 2010. Horizons f or the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play. In Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, ed. J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, and E. Di Paolo, 33–87. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ekman, P. 1980. Biological and cultural contributions to body and f acial movement in the expression of emo tions. In Explaining Emotions, ed. A. O. Rorty, 73–102. Berkeley: University of Calif ornia Press

Fogel, A., and E. Thelen. 1987. Development of early expressive and communicative action: Reinterpreting the evidence f rom a dynamical systems perspective. Developmental Psychology 23: 747–761.

Fogel, A., E. Nwokah, J. Y. Dedo, D. Messinger, K. L. Dickson, E. Matusov, and S. Holt. 1992. Social process theo ry of emotion: A dynamic systems approach. Social Development 1: 122–142.

Freeman, W. J. 2000. Emotion is essential to all intentional behavior. In Emotion, Development, and Self- Organization: Dynamic Systems Approaches to Emotional Development, ed. M.D. Lewis and I. Granic, 209–235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Husserl, E. [1952] 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Lewis, M. D. 2005. Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamical systems modeling. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28:169–245.

Merleau-Ponty, M. [1945] 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge.

Pessoa, L. 2008. On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9: 148–158.

Pessoa, L. 2012. Beyond brain regions: Network perspective of cognition–emotion interactions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (3): 158-159.

Scherer, K. R. 2009. The dynamic architecture of emotion: Evidence f or the component process model. Cogni tion and Emotion 23:1307–1351.

Thompson, E. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni versity Press.

Thompson, E. 2011. Précis of Mind in Lif e: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind. Journal of Con sciousness Studies 18 (5-6): 10-22.

Thompson, E., and D. Cosmelli. 2012. Brain in a vat or body in a world? Brainbound versus enactive views of ex perience. Philosophical Topics 39 (1): 163-180.

Thompson, E., and D. Zahavi. 2007. Philosophical issues: Continental phenomenology. In The Cambridge Han dbook of Consciousness, ed. P. D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, and E. Thompson, 67–88. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press.

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Torrance, S. 2005. In search of the enactive: Introduction to special issue on enactive experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 357-368.

Varela, F. J. 1996. Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy f or the hard problem. Journal of Conscious ness Studies 3: 330–350.

Varela, F. J., E. Thompson, and E. Rosch. 1991. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wilson-Mendenhall, C. D., L. F. Barrett, W. K. Simmons, and L. W. Barsalou, et al. 2011 Grounding emotion in situated conceptualization. Neuropsychologia 49: 1105-1127. emo t io nresearcher.co m http://emotionresearcher.com/in-memoriam-michael-owren-1955-2014/

In Memoriam: Michael Owren (1955-2014)

Drew Rendall, Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge

Michael J. Owren, a teacher and scientist who analyzed the biological f oun dations of animal and human communication, died on January 15 2014 at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. Michael was born July 19, 1955 in Oslo, Nor way, the third child of Leif and Ingrid Owren. He was raised in College, Alas ka; Hanover, New Hampshire; and Bergen, Norway. He received his B.A. in Psychology f rom Reed College and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology f rom Indiana University.

Michael taught psychology and neuroscience f or over 25 years, f irst while doing post-doctoral work at the University of Calif ornia, Davis, and later at the University of Colorado at Denver; the University of Otago (New Zealand); Reed College; Cornell University; and Georgia State University. At the time of his death, he was an Adjunct Prof essor at Emory University.

Michael had a vigorous scientif ic career f ocused on understanding the nature, scope and mechanisms of non- linguistic communication. He thought closely and caref ully about f ocal phenomena in systems of vocal produc tion and perception and his empirical studies are widely recognized f or their unparalleled rigor and attention to detail.

He was also a skilled developer of novel research technologies and a sophisticated theoretician. On the met hods side, he pioneered the application of spectral analysis techniques developed in speech science to the study of animal communication (see f or instance his “Some analysis methods that may be usef ul to acoustic primatologists”). Based on the example of his own research, and on his detailed tutorials f or their appropriate use and application, such techniques were widely embraced and became a standard part of the analytic toolkit of animal bioacousticians.

In his theorizing ef f orts, Michael was particularly invested in delineating and clarif ying core constructs that un dergird the theoretical f oundations of the f ield of animal communication, and in this, as in everything else, he brought exceptional clarity of thought, expression and vision. Michael and I jointly developed a heterodox theo ry of the origins and evolution of signaling systems in animals and humans (See f or instance our collaborative papers “Sound on the rebound” and “An af f ect-conditioning model of non-human primate vocal signaling”).

The theory, dubbed the “af f ect-induction model”, emphasizes that many animal vocalizations, and some f orms of nonlinguistic vocal communication in humans such as laughter, “work” by inf luencing relatively low-level pro cesses of attention, arousal, emotion, and motivation in the listener rather than the kind of high-level intention al and representational processes that support complex language in humans.

We distinguished two mechanisms of such inf luence, in particular. In some cases, the signal itself has acoustic properties that have a direct impact on the af f ective states of the recipient. Young vocalizers, f or instance, can generate aversive sounds like crying, shrieking, or other kinds of loud and extravagant sounds, which directly motivate caregivers to pay attention and take action to turn of f the source of the noxious stimulus.

In other cases, the signal is not high-impact by virtue of its acoustic properties alone, but it inf luences the af f ective state of the recipient by virtue of its association with social experiences that have positive or negative consequences, thereby leading to conditioned af f ective responses. Dominant monkeys can, f or instance, exploit social conditioning processes by pairing distinctive threat calls with subsequent physical attack on subordinate rivals, using the threat call alone in f uture encounters to in timidate those individuals.

Michael applied these insights to the understanding of human laughter, working closely with Jo-Anne Bac horowski in this enterprise (See f or instance two of their papers “The acoustic f eatures of human laughter” and “Not all laughs are alike”).

They proposed that laughter “works” by being associated with positive events – e.g. a joke, a happy meal with f riends – and becoming a conditioned stimulus f or those events. Since laughter breeds more laughter, laugh production creates positive and reciprocally sustaining af f ective states that can be used f or f ostering coopera tion and dif f using conf licts.

The af f ect-induction model was creatively applied by Michael to a large domain of experimental settings, rang ing f rom alarm calling and f ood calling in nonhuman primates, domestic cat meowing, inf ant babbling and human laughter (Notable publications here include “The acoustic f eatures of vowel-like grunt calls in chacma baboons,” “Salience of caller identity in rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) coos and screams: Perceptual experi ments with human listeners” and “Asymmetries in the individual distinctiveness and maternal recognition of in f ant contact calls and distress screams in baboons”).

The model challenges the standard interpretation of non-linguistic signals as providing veridical inf ormation to recipients, suggesting that they can have a much more direct impact on recipients’ responses and in ways that are not always aligned with receiver interests (See “What do animal signals mean?” and “Communication with out meaning or inf ormation” f or an exploration of some of the tensions with the received view). But it also shows how low-level processes of inf luence can pave the way f or more complex representational communica tion like that epitomized by the semantic qualities of human language.

In addition to its academic recognition, Michael’s work generated interest in the popular media, as in a 2003 Chicago Tribune article that described his f eline communication research as the “how of the meow,” and a 2009 NPR interview on his work with Marina Davila Ross investigating the evolutionary roots of laughter: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104952197.

Michael loved teaching, and was a mentor to many undergraduate and graduate students. Outside the classroom, he was a lif e-long runner. For a while, he also sang prof essionally, perf orming during his time in De nver with an a cappella group known as Cool Shooz. To his f riends and f amily, Michael was known f or his intel ligence, dry wit, and knowledge of everything. From beer to basketball to politics and world geography, Michael was the guy everyone wanted on their Trivial Pursuit team.

Michael is survived by his three siblings, Turid Owren of Portland, Oregon; Henry Owren, also of Portland; and Thomas Owren, of Bergen, Norway; as well as thirteen nieces and nephews who loved spending time with their Uncle Michael. They, along with his many students, colleagues, and f riends, will miss him greatly. I will too…